I’ve been on quite the journey with my Coral Island playthrough and it has somehow become my main game recently.

Early days was just your typical farming sim loop. You know the one. Clear land, prepare the land, plant the seeds, water the seeds, look up in bewilderment at the fact that evening was drawing near. Those early in-game days are always a little frantic as you race to get everything done before you run out of hours in the day, stamina, or both.

Phase two was when cash started becoming the limiting factor. That’s when I got serious and set up a spreadsheet to try to track which crops and ‘artisan goods’ (aka crafted items) were most profitable. At the end of every in-game day I’d pop open my laptop and transcribe all the figures in. This was kind of fun and interesting…until it wasn’t.

As is typical in these games, you get better at everything. You get new tools to automate chores (sprinklers to do your watering, feeders to keep the livestock fed, improvements to your tools so manual labor goes faster and eats less stamina). That gives you more time to explore, which is about when I learned there’s a second map and it’s all underwater. I spent a LOT of time cleaning the sea floor around Coral Island. This was honestly tedious but in a zen kind of way.

There are also a series of mines that need to be explored. These had monsters in them, though so far the combat has been ridiculously easy. But you have to find a hole to go down to the next level, and that hole is randomly placed under a rock, which has to be busted up via pickaxe. You can’t only ‘save’ your progress every 5 levels (except for the final stretch which is 10 levels) so you need a lot of time and stamina to make sure you get to the next “elevator stop” in the mines. You might find the next shaft down on the first rock you break, or it might be under the LAST rock in a level, so you never know how long it’ll take. I generally did these on rainy days when I didn’t have to spend time/energy watering.

Eventually the money situation got better and now I’ve got what I think are the biggest sprinklers. Here’s the layout I’m in the process of putting together:

My next investment is a dohickey that attaches to the sprinklers and automatically fertilizes, plants seeds and harvests crops. That should more or less automate the farm, though the animals and artisan goods will still require me doing things.

I was thinking I was hitting end game and then I got an invitation to start a second farm…. underwater! What!!!? I was warned not to start this until I had my land farm squared away, so I’ve yet to discover how involved this part of the game is.

In the meantime I’ve finally started socializing with the townsfolks. Generally this isn’t my favorite part of these games, but here it is pretty good. First, there are events where you are basically just an observer and the event happens between NPCs which makes the town feel more ‘real’ to me. I’m an NOT the sole focus of attention for everything that happens here. The “hangouts” are easy. In the “My Time At…” series hangouts required you to drag your friend/date all over the place and play minigames which for me got pretty tedious pretty quick. Here you ask someome to hang out, pick an activity from the map, and then it just happens in a little ‘montage’ of you and the NPC having fun and chatting. So it is simpler in gameplay terms, but more rich in ‘story’. Right in my wheelhouse.

I’m only in the Spring of Year 2 but I’m over 50 hours of playtime (the game starts in Spring). I manage about 2 in-game days per evening of gaming time, so I could be here for a while yet. But it is really hitting that sweet spot of pretty chill gameplay, characters that are reasonably interesting, and progression that so far has felt satisfying. I picked up Coral Island on a whim after finishing My Time At Sandrock just because it was offered via the PS+ subscription, but it’s been one of those very happy gaming accidents. It was a little slow and ‘same-y’ at the start but if you stick with it through the first season or so the unique aspects start to emerge. In my opinion, it was worth the wait (and even the same-y bits were as fun as they always are, to me, when starting these games. I take a weird joy in clearing fields and stuff). I’m liking it enough that I’ve put it on my Steam wishlist to snag on sale so I can replay it at some point on PC.